BBC Scotland, an anti-independence party in May’s Scottish election
Speymouth
The parties are gearing up for May’s Scottish elections. On one side there’s the SNP and their frenemies the Scottish Greens – parties which disagree on many things but which share a common belief in the principle that the people of Scotland should be the sole arbiters of government policy in Scotland and the future of this country. On the other side there’s the unholy informal alliance of the Labour party, the Lib Dems, the Conservatives, the zombie Tories of Reform UK, and the BBC, which likewise disagree on certain things – I’m being kind – but which all agree that the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland should be subordinated to the decrees of whatever British party leader manages to secure a majority in the House of Commons on the basis of a minority of the popular vote in England and all too often a very small minority of the popular vote in Scotland. This, we are assured, is democracy.
The BBC is not an impartial and dispassionate observer of and reporter on the Scottish political scene. It is an active participant in Scottish politics, which amplifies and platforms Labour and Conservative attack lines against the Scottish Government while either ignoring completely or sidelining any successes of the Scottish Government. If you believed BBC Scotland, the First Minister is personally responsible for someone who had to wait for an NHS appointment. This is in very marked contrast the the BBC in Wales, where stories about issues with the NHS entail BBC reporters asking NHS managers what is going on, not door stopping the Welsh health minister. This may or may not be related to the fact that the Welsh Health Minister is a Labour member of the Senedd. I’m guessing ‘may’.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that’s because the current Welsh Government is led by the Labour party and as such poses no threat to the unity of the UK, whose cohesiveness the BBC has an obligation to defend and promote, according to the BBC charter. You can expect that to change should Plaid Cymru take control of the Welsh Government following May’s election.
You could almost hear the screaming from Pacific Quay last week when the doctors’ union announced that it was calling off the planned strike of junior doctors in Scotland. Predictably, this success was quickly glossed over on BBC Scotland’s news broadcasts, which had very clearly been gearing up for a gleeful orgy of Scottish Government attack stories in the event that the strike had gone ahead. The exact same thing happened in 2023 when then Scottish Health Minister Humza Yousaf led successful negotiations which resulted in the cancellation of planned doctors’ strikes.
The National newspaper has reported that BBC Scotland has had to issue more corrections and apologies for what we are supposed to call “errors” than all other BBC national and regional branches combined. Not a single one of these errors has been made by showing bias towards the Scottish Government. Instead there is a long standing and persistent pattern of “errors” which have favoured the Labour and Conservative parties at the expense of the SNP. To take just one example out of many, prior to the Holyrood by-election in Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse last year, BBC Scotland’s Debate Night panel featured three Labour-supporting panellists out of five. The BBC did not identify two of them as Labour backers.
More recently, following the victory of Reform UK in a council by election in West Lothian, in an area where there’s a significant Orange Order presence BBC Scotland – which is apparently very keen to minimise political differences between Scotland and England – broadcast not one but two reports on the far right party’s win, although the win was on a risibly low turn out of 22.2%, and Reform beat the SNP by a mere 149 votes. This was the first time that BBC Scotland had deigned to notice a council by election on its main evening news programme. The broadcaster did not mention the potential role the traditionally far right sectarian British nationalist Orange Order might have played in mobilising its supporters and members to vote Reform.
In yet another example of BBC Scotland’s anti-independence party bias, in October BBC Scotland was forced to issue an apology after falsely claiming that “over £1 million [had been] spent on sending Scottish ferry staff to Turkey” in order to monitor the construction there of new vessels for CalMac. The BBC had broadcast almost verbatim a Tory press release making the false claim. In reality only £23,000 had been spent on the Turkish trips to monitor the construction of new vessels, with the remaining £1m being normal staffing costs over three years, which would have been paid regardless.
The BBC also broadcast the false claim made by Nigel Farage that one-third of Glasgow’s schoolchildren are not fluent in English. This claim was never corrected even though it’s blatantly false. Farage, in one of his typical attempts to stir up hatred against migrant communities, had misrepresented figures from the Scottish Government about bilingualism amongst school pupils in Scotland. Being bilingual is absolutely not the same as lacking fluency in English.
What you will look for in vain in BBC Scotland’s litany of errors and corrections are any where the Corporation had made an error in favour of the Scottish Government, yet had these all really been simple errors you should expect to find a number of instances of just that. What we see instead is a clear favouritism and bias to the benefit of parties opposed to Scottish independence. This will only intensify as we approach May’s Scottish elections. BBC Scotland’s executives are already rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of Peter Murrell’s upcoming trial. BBC Scotland is, following Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Reform UK, Scotland’s fifth anti-independence party, abusing public money to pump out a diet of British nationalist, royalist, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration propaganda. BBC Scotland will be an active participant in May’s election.
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